Looking at you Verizon
Looking at you Verizon
A friendly reminder that isps do NOT care about you or your digital rights. Always best to buy directly from the OEM rather than from the telecommunications (unless you can't afford it). Do proper research before buying a phone!
ISP locking doesn't make any sense, why should they care if I use stock Android or GraphineOS?
Because the core reason is about control. They don't want users to have the option or freedom to install an OS of their choice because it could hurt their "precious" revenue
A lot of carrier phones come with carrier preinstalled apps. And it allows for sim locking, keeping you trapped with them or other carriers on the same network. Or at least that’s how it has been, back in the day, when sim-locking still was legal in the EU. Now, phones are the same, whether they come from your carrier or retail.
You don't think they care that you're attempting to circumvent their data collection on you?
Their stated reason is to mitigate theft by preventing removal of software that binds the device to the network and account, and to protect their network by blocking paths to custom roms including potentially custom radio firmware.
The real reason is likely a blend of protecting leased devices for resale value, keeping people from removing "sponsored" apps or ones that make them money, and distrust of users ability to not get tricked into abject stupid choices.
There's also ad blocking via the hosts file
They care because some users don’t actually own their phones and the carrier wants to keep strings attached, or they want to impose artificial software restrictions like preventing or limiting hotspot data.
Even when none of those conditions apply, you still often must deal with the locked boot loader. It’s BS.
This is why you never, ever, buy a phone from a carrier
The concept was always bizarre to me. It's like getting a PC as part of your broadband contract. Speaking of, it would make more sense to get a phone as part of your broadband contract, my phone is 95% an internet device. That it happens to have a SIM card in it is a minor feature.
my phone is 95% an internet device. That it happens to have a SIM card in it is a minor feature.
I seriously wonder how long carriers will keep handing out phone numbers to data-only devices. It has to be a serious cost for them to provision out so many numbers plus it only contributes to the phone number exhaustion problem that happens in many areas codes. For example my work has about 1000 training iPads we've shipped out, all with phone numbers local to our main office, purely for the purposes of connecting to mobile data. Any messaging/phone apps the Apple might proload are removed via the MDM so they really never use the phone number for anything. And I imagine the company I work for is not a minority in doing something like that given how cheap iPads are to deploy at scale for anything that just needs to run a web browser and nothing else
Especially US carriers. Elsewhere, it varies.
This and bootkits.
Ok. Now how do I unlock my samsung note 20 ultra that isn't carrier locked?
Assuming that model can be unlocked you'd usually enable developer options in Android settings, toggle the bootloader unlock option there then reboot to the bootloader and finish unlocking (and wiping) the phone.
There's some Samsung fuckery requiring button presses and/or a cable plugged into the phone at the right time during boot to get into different bootloader modes, the exact buttons and cable plugging sequence vary by model so Google and see if you can find an XDA thread or something.
I've used all sorts of other ROM builds, lately I had been into LineageOS. Then I ran a stock Zenfone a while because I got sick of the never-ending treadmill of bootloader unlock>ROM>root>magisk etc etc
After 9 months with a stock phone I got a (used) Pixel and put GrapheneOS on it. From first boot it took all of 10 minutes to unlock the bootloader and install GrapheneOS. The longest part was the download. Bootloader re-locked. Easy peasy.
I'm a convert. I don't prefer the Pixel hardware, tho it's okay, but the ability to easily put my own OS on (and still use my banking apps) is pretty tits. I could revert to stock in 5 minutes.
People have told me not to try graphene because of the devs reputation, do you think it matters really?
Buy a phone not tied to a carrier
Easy if you have money. If a new phone is a financial stretch, then in the short term it can be cheaper to get a nice phone for "free" with carrier lock in (which of course means it wasn't free at all). It probably ends up being more expensive in the long term, but your paycheck can cover it.
You can actually get financing directly from Google who make the Pixel line of phones themselves, with bootloader unlocked as an option. So there is absolutely zero reason to buy from a carrier like Verizon unless they have a really fantastic promotion happening.
brand new androids with the latest version go for about $150 ($90 with android 13 from last year); with them costing the same as 2 to 5 months of a carrier plan in the united states, it's hard to imagine them being a financial stretch
That does not mean you will be able to unlock the boot loader. Unlocked carrier doesn't mean unlockecable boot loader. A lot of manufactures don't give you access to unlock it. US variants of Samsung phones are one example.
And on many phones, even if you can unlock the boot loader, there is a big chance that you will not have support by any major roms. There are only a handful of phone manufacturers that have easily unlockable boot loaders and are well supported by roms. Google, OnePlus, Motorola, and Huawei are the major ones that have good support because they make the boot loader unlocking easy.
Rather: only buy phones with explicit vendor guarantee that the bootloader can be unlocked / comes unlocked.
I don't know what Verizons deal is with it honestly, but T-Mobile hasn't gotten in the way of it, they've even carrier unlocked phones for me that were still on a fresh payment plan for it.
Always best to buy directly from the OEM
Not everyone can afford that you know, and I find those budget/mid range phones insufferable. I'd buy one as a matter of last resort only.
I have a "budget" device from 2019. It runs Lineage OS and works fine.
Also you are the product
Or buy a leading edge phone from 2-4 years ago, which is what I do. I can afford to keep hot spares around at those prices.
I am more than aware that not everyone can afford buying high priced phones right out. I should have clarified that in my post
I think what you did was OK. Meme doesn’t necessarily have to apply to everyone. In this case, you can say it was restricted to those who should have full control of their device with every expectation and for every reason, and it would still be valid and makes sense. But that’s just my opinion.
The best thing is actually to buy a used phone that was really good a couple years ago. I bought a used Oneplus 9 for $200 last year and it's still perfectly usable and way more powerful than I've ever needed a phone to be. Also older phones are more likely to be supported by third party android distributions.
When have you last used a mid range phone? It used to make a huge difference, but over the years, as phones matured, I feel it's shrunken down more and more. I used to always use flagships, but these days, I don't see what value they provide over 400-600€ phones in daily usage.
first world countries have carrier locking illegal, and carriers sell the same configuration phones as regular shops.
Welcome to capitalism...
For a long time VZW used separate tech. That required a different antenna/software. Hence special phones.
And still has some frequency bands not offered on international phones. But it is mostly about control.
Carrier locking != Bootloader unlocking
carriers who must sell the same phone as an electronics retailer cannot stop you from unlocking the bootloader.
If you want to be on Verizon, check out Visible. Same network, but way cheaper. Bring your own device or use one of their cheap options.
While this is true, be aware there are drawbacks to 3rd party budget carriers.
The service includes caveats that your traffic lower priority then VZWs so if your on a busy node you may get throttled or temporarily kicked off
They offer 2 plans. $25/mo is subject to throttling because it is not premium data. The $45/mo plan is $50 premium data before you're subject to possible throttling. I hear that throttling is rare except large events, so I'm willing to risk it, I only use about 5 GB mobile data per month anyways.
I tried them for a month and had Kbps bandwidth consistently. This one is directly from Verizon I believe though. They use it to test things on their network like dropping 3g support.
Carriers still sell phones?
Use Swappa and never pay too much for your new old phone.
You don't even need to get a phone from ISP or some telecom, on Xiaomi you need to install sussy app on PC and wait for a week, for unlocking bootloader.
Unless you are Chinese user, which means you are double fucked.
To unlock your phone, you need to:
- Level 5 Xiaomi Forum Level (Gonna take half a year if you only check in daily, if you post and replies, then its tiny bit faster.)
- Make an appointment for the Unlocking Permission Test (random dates, xiaomi is also slowly/quietly limiting the number of test dates)
- Pass the test (timed, broad range/difficult technical questions, akin to a 300 level college exam that you're not given any materials to study for)
- If you pass, you're only allow to unlock 3 phones per year.
But hey, if you bought the phone outside of China (or simply not Chinese version), then you don't have to do any of those except wait for 68 hours. Fuck the Chinese users eh (Chinese version also has a lot more bloatwares, the apps that you download from xiaomi app store also more invasive (more permission) than google play versions).
What the fuck that's like a whole NPC quest line.
I think it's 72h after linking your phone to your Xiaomi account, don't need their pc app abd tools work fine.
It's still one of the brands that are most open for custom roms since you'll retain your warranty unless you manage to do physical damage to the phone in the process.
I found this out when an old phone stopped getting updates, so I was gonna push a third-party OS, but no, even though it was a carrier unlocked MODEL, Verizon locked it and refuses to unlock it. So the phone is just gonna be out of date forever, I guess!